Damn it! I figured I was thinking out of the box on this one. My network is currently 100 mb/s. So even though the drive can go up to 480mbps transfer rate, when its plugged into a networked computer, and anyone trying to read/write to it will be limited to 10MB/s? What if I upgraded my network router and cards to gigabit ethernet, would I get higher transfer rates?
Im just trying to understand if gigabit ethernet can give you around 125MB/s in theory, why couldn't I transfer at around 60-80MB/s
I think I should just keep what I have and not go through the hassle of swapping the drive for the usb version to meddle with hooking it up to my w2k server and keep it available on the network??
Too many variables to consider, im gettin a headache
You need to start with the hard drive specs and work back from there. No matter how you connect the drive, it will not be faster than it is.
The spec you want to look for on the hard drive is NOT the interface spec (PATA133, SATA 1.5, SATA 3.0 etc.) but the sustained throughput of the drive (sometimes expressed by the manufacturer as "buffer to disk sustained throughput" or similar words).
Here are two examples from Western Digital. The first is a desktop computer drive with a SATA 3.0 interface, 7200 rpm. The second is an "enterprise" drive, 10,000 rpm, SATA 1.5 interface.
WD3200YS 7200rpm Hard Drive, buffer to disk: 61 MB/sec.
WD1500ADFD 10K prm hard drive, buffer to disk: 84 MB/sec.
Notice that the drive with the slower interface is actually higher performance.
Nothing you do to either of these drives by way of packaging and connection will result in a higher throughput than the specified sustained buffer to disk throughput (for large files). You can have peak throughput that approaches the interface spec for small files that are already in the buffer.
Assuming you are sticking to desktop drives (much cheaper), that 61MB/sec translates to 488 Mbps. This means that you would never reach "gigabit" throughput with this drive, but you could easily max out a 100 Mbps network interface and even a firewire / USB 2.0 interface.
A well designed 100 Mbps ethernet should see throughput in the range of 10 MB/sec maximum.
A well designed gigabit ethernet LAN should see throughput in the range of 100 MB/sec.
So, what you are looking for is either a direct-connect drive (SATA, SATA 3.0, USB 2.0, firewire) or upgrading your LAN to gigabit and making sure your NAS enclosure will actually perform in the 400+ Mbps range. But, short of spending big bucks for enterprise server class drives, you are not going to get true "gigabit" throughput from your hard drive.